The Good Men Project

When I was interviewing my classmate and friend Matt Weiner about his hit show MAD MEN, well before it had become the sensation it is now,  I was struck with one idea he repeated to me over and over again when I asked about his writing process. “It’s not what Don Draper says, it’s what he doesn’t say that’s really important.” That was over a year ago, just after the MAD MEN team had come back from the strike and started working on season two. Matt’s gone on to win all kinds of awards since then, but I have continued to ponder just what he meant and the relevance to all us guys out there.

Weiner himself is a contradiction. He studied feminist poetry at Wesleyan, even moderating a debate between women on the topic of pornography (if you want a laugh you can hear him describe that scene on audio tape, just scroll to bottom and click) . Yet the women on MAD MEN are treated horribly. He argued violently with me that the show is actually feminist because it is holding up a mirror to us all to see what sexism really looks like, then and even now. He is obsessive with his costumes to make them authentic and, he told me in no uncertain terms, he is just as obsessive about showing the truth of how women in that environment were treated. And from the discomfort of watching real-life, the viewer has to deal with how it relates to 2009 and their own lives. “It’s a direct challenge,” he told me.

So where does that leave the guys? Don Draper is a liar, a cheat, a drunk and a womanizer. He doesn’t seem very happy, I have to say. He looks miserable. But he is trapped in his inability to come clean, to actually articulate what the hell is going on. Weiner admitted that his first drafts of the show always come out with no real narrative line on purpose. It’s man’s attempt to run from himself and the truth. It’s Weiner’s wife, his first and most trusted reader, who always tells him, “Matt, this makes no sense. You actually have to give the actors lines that they can deliver with some conviction.” So Weiner redrafts for plot. But he never allows Draper, or the other men, to rescue themselves. They are not capable. The show’s momentum is built on them digging deeper and deeper holes for themselves.

So, I ask, why do we, in 2009, find Draper (and Weiner for that matter, since this is his creation) so riveting? My theory is that we understand all too well what Weiner is talking about when he says it’s not what men say, it’s what they are incapable of saying that really counts. As guys, we have been unable to come clean emotionally for way too long. Women have been left to read the tea leaves. But it’s not them that it has hurt most. It’s us. We are trapped. We don’t want to talk about our “feelings” for fear that we will end up on some Oprah show from hell. Yet if we stick to the box scores and the stock market, our real experience of life will go unnoticed, and what we really care about never is articulated.

I think what Weiner has figured out is that by dressing his characters up in 1960 suits and putting cigarettes in all their fingers he gets us to lower our guard just enough to watch Don Draper, feel compassion for him, and realize that he isn’t just some figment of our imagination. He is actually us.